Do They Ever Grow Up? :-( - Page 1

I was in a rush to leave for church this morning, and accidentally forgot to put my 11 month old pup in her crate before leaving. We had a community outreach today, where we were delivering food to needy families, and I was gone longer than usual. By the time I got home, she'd chewed up a nice pair of suede gloves I'd left drying in front of the hot air register. She also took 2 pairs of glasses off my desk. One pair was totally destroyed, the other pair just had the plastic pulled off one of the ear hooks. Now, these are not prescription glasses, just the cheap magnifying specs sold in most drugstores. Still, they're around $20 a pair. Add another $20 for the gloves, and that's $60! Not something I can easily just shrug off this close to Christmas. Yes, it's my fault for forgetting to crate her. But I am hoping to train this pup to take Ranger's place as my Hearing Ear dog, which means she will have to be free in the house eventually to be able to do her job. I'd like to think there's no rush with the training, but Ranger has ongoing prostate problems, and is leaking urine in his sleep, and occasionally at other times as well. I have an appointment with a specialist for him on Tuesday to see if anything can be done to help him. It could be I'm not going to have him that much longer. How long do puppies take to outgrow this destructive chewing phase? How long before I can risk leaving her uncrated? Do some dogs never outgrow this? She did have a toy to chew on. I've found if I take one of the Bad Cuz toys and remove the feet, the rest of it is pretty indestructible, unlike the kongs and other toys she's demolished piece by piece. The annoying thing is she waits until I leave before destroying stuff. Those gloves were there all day yesterday, and she never touched them until I left the house!

   Arrrghhh...sorry, just needed to vent!

Maybe she gets bored when you are not there?  I have had good luck with leaving the kind of toys that you fill with treats and it takes them a long time to get all the treats out.  11 months is still pretty young, my dog is finally starting to settle at 2 years.

LOL wait until they eat a couch like Chaos and Bree did last week!  Trusting them was stupid on our part!  Trust is gone and they will be crated while home alone!

PSP, any sort of a dog toy with a hole in it will be HISTORY in a very short time. So far, she has eaten half of a black kong, part of a minature tire, the corner off a puppy teething ring, and most of a rubber tug, including part of the rope. The Bad Cuz toys work because the have no holes in them, except for the squeaker, which is too small for her to get her teeth into so she can tear it open.

Sheperd Woman, I don't allow my dogs access to the living room, but Star has tried sharpening her teeth on my dining room chairs!  Luckily it's not an expensive set, and the damage doesn't show too badly, because those chairs are on the far side of the table, between it and the china cabinet. So the only time you'd notice is if you were going to sit in one, and happened to look down at the legs.

Was the couch leather?

But suede tastes so-o-o-o good, & this kinda smelled like Mommy, too! And those funny things Mom puts on her face, they smelled a lot like Mom, ya' need to see what they are & if they'll come apart...Seriously, though, I've been lucky with my GSDs so far, no major destuction...except for bath mats...Beckett  thinks bath mat is synonamys for tug-toy! Oh, & kitchen towels & oven gloves, the occassional flip-flop or gator. Kali likes to sneak into the trash.......& she knows better....! It's really tough once they learn that they can 'get away' with destruction when you're not there. My sons Shepherd mix was a real stinker about chewing up shoes when no-one was home; I finally got so angry at him, (after he got my new $75.00 nursing shoes out of their box off a shelf from a closed closet!!!) that I tied one of the destroyed shoes around his neck & made him wear it for a whole day in the house. That did seem to cure him of chewing shoes, but not the other destructive behaviours that he had. His name was Buddha, & he convinced me that crating was a good thing!  Good Luck! jackie harris

Nope, the couch is cloth.  They ate the entire end off of it.  Arm, front etc.  Foam everywhereeeeeee, LOL. 

Oh, sorry. I thought you were talking about husbands.

YIIIIIKKKEEESSS!!! I would be SO mad! I bought a new couch when I moved into this house 2 1/2 years ago, also a new rug. I had one of my chairs recovered to match the couch, which cost almost as much as buying a new one. Three VERY good reasons why the dogs are not allowed in the living room. I have a few very expensive breakables on the mantle there, too: a Royal Doulton figurine my mom left me, and a Llladro figurine of a nurse that was a graduation gift from my parents when I got my RN.

The worst Ranger has done was chewed up newespapers and an old wallet I was using for tracking. Hey, it was LEATHER, and I put bits of FOOD inside it! How was he to know it was off limits?

Oh, and he counter surfs now an then. Gotta do the pop can trick one of these days, but he, too, waits until I'm out of the house to get into mischief, and if I'm not there to discipline him when he triggers the popl can trap, he might decide he can get away with it..

One day as I was leaving, I stopped to water the hanging baskets on the porch. As I walked past the kitchen window, there was Star with her feet up on the sink, peering out the window to see if I'd gone yet. Ranger was lurking in the kitchen doorway, waiting for Star to give him the 'all clear'!

 I went back inside and put the pupster in her crate, even though I was only making a milk run to the store... It looked too much like they were planning something really bad!

I am glad I am not the only one.I left mine out of the crate when I went out to feed the horses...came back in to 40 pounds of puppy food on the floor....well all over the floor.The bird cage was knocked over..man what a mess

Still not talking about husbands right?